


The Sea And Its Secrets [ON HOLD]

by yuktenisreal



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, LuTen, M/M, Merman Ten, mermaid au, yukten
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-20 06:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuktenisreal/pseuds/yuktenisreal
Summary: In which Lucas comes across the most beautiful and vicious creature he has ever laid his eyes upon, a merman called Ten.





	1. Chapter 1

Water lapped around Lucas’s feet, a few droplets clung to his brandished skin. The emerald sea had its charm in the morning, right before the dawn broke. For these few minutes Lucas felt that it wasn’t such a waste of time after all to be dragged along on a family vacation to this mostly-desolate island with nothing to do but idly bake yourself raw out in the sun. The worst part was, the sun here was horribly weak, failing to emerge out of the endless stream of clouds making their way across many such islands. He was miles away from his home, on a vacation with his family, on a sparsely-populated island where rich people came to sunbathe their time away. He was filthy rich, well, his parents were. All his life he’d been ushered in suvs, jets and boats to beach-side bungalows and fancy dinner tables for family-time. This time was no different. He ended up in places like these, so often and so frequently, never feeling a single bump along the way, thanks to all the luxuries and the seamless services that wealth provided, that he never found it meaningful to end up in the places he did. It was so utterly pointless, to be away, without leaving anything behind. He was here now, standing knee deep in icy-cold waters while his parents and brothers slept peacefully in their stately beds, and tomorrow, if his parents wished, he’d back in his house, being tutored in this or that, being expected to greet everyone at the lavish wine parties they often threw. They could just be anywhere they wanted, on a whim, answerable only to themselves. So today he was killing time by taking a walk along the beach, less in the sand, more in the emerald green water. The sun was creeping its way up on the horizon and Lucas willed himself to turn around and sneak back into his room again He would have to be very quiet and careful, for his parents would not appreciate this habit of sneaking-out that he had developed lately. 

 

They had come here yesterday and it was so awfully comfortable that it became boring as soon as they reached and claimed their rooms. It could be the boredom that drew Lucas towards the ocean or possibly the calmness it offered; the bungalow was never quiet much to the credit of his younger siblings’ play-fights. 

 

Deeply asleep, last night, Lucas had sunk so far into his bed beneath the sheets that when he heard his windows crash open with a bang, he thought it was a dream. When he finally propped himself up to look at the open window, he tried to recall whether he’d closed it before he went to bed.  _ That window was closed when I came.  _ He didn’t remember opening it to begin with. He gently tiptoed his way to the window and gently shut it close. A gush of the cold night air hit him the face before he snapped the windows shut. HIs heart was beating unreasonably fast but Lucas did not want to focus on in. If he got creeped out now, he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. So he closed off his minds to any thoughts and drifted back to sleep. 

  
  


He woke up before dawn broke, sweaty and almost breathless because of the suffocating humidity in the room. His head felt heavy, the room felt too hot and humid. He leaned over to grab his phone and checked the time.  _ 4:21 am.  _ It must have been the uncomfortable amounts of sweats on his body that made him wish for fresh air. So almost without a thought, his body moved towards the windows that faced the ocean, with urgency threw them open and breathed in the cool air, the smell of the sea spread out across the horizon, as far as the eyes could see. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t see much. The sky was beginning to take a bluish hue but it was still dark and eerily quiet, except the occasional flapping of a bird’s wings, flying about at such an odd hour and the noise of ships in the distance. The sound of waves washing in and out at the beach were so continuous that Lucas’s brain was automatically tuning it out. He listened closer because he had to occupy himself somehow while he stood at the windows wide open for fresh air. Nothing. Then there was a splash. Lucas’s head whipped to where the sound had seemed to come from. For a second his sight stayed there, trying very hard to identify the source, perhaps even a silhouette. Confused, he turned his head to the other direction. Suddenly he wasn’t sure where the sound had come from. He waited, maybe it would happen again but it didn’t. Although it made him anxious, there was an other itch in his body. It was a sort of restlessness, an inch in his toes as if they wanted to submerged in water, to be scraped against sand, and the room was still so terribly heated that Lucas gave in. He would have jumped out the window but the thought felt weird. It wasn’t a civil thing to do. So he carefully made his way across the house, out the back door, onto the eerily cold beach. The sudden temperature drop left him shivering but he didn’t mind at all, if anything, the cold rush of wind ringing in his ears felt like the biggest relief. He stood there for some time, letting his body adjust to the temperature before once again the itch started to get the best of him. It urged him to let the water touch his feet and once again, he gave in. No reluctance and it was uncanny because Lucas had the habit of always saying no to things before he finally agreed, all plans, all ideas, even his parents, although in those matters his NO hardly matters. 

 

So there Lucas was, standing in icy-cold water, staring blankly at the horizon in the dawn. He told himself he did not have a reason to be there, told himself that it was just a whim, he had to kill time anyway, but as he made his way back to his house, a chill had settled in his body leaving his nerves on edge.

 

He had a dream when he went back to bed for an hour before he would be called out for breakfast. In the dream he stood on the beach, blind, knee-deep in water, while things splashed around him. Things? Beings. He woke up a little dizzy but glad that his eyes could see normally.

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

“Hyung! Hyung! Lucas hyung! Hyu-” Chenle barged into Lucas’s room without knocking. Lucas was in the middle of brushing his hair, he didn’t turn around to look and continued with his task as if he hadn’t heard his younger brother scream his name.

 

Lucas began to hum to a tune.

 

“Hyung,” Chenle pouted. Lucas saw his reflection in the mirror but did not respond.

“Hyung, are you ignoring me?” Chenle pouted more if that was even possible. It always amused Lucas to tease Chenle whenever he had chance. He had a soft spot for Chenle’s cuteness.

 

“If you don’t answer, I’ll tell mom about you sneaking out at night.”

 

Lucas’s eyes widened, he whipped around. “How did you know? W-wait...come here you little….” Lucas tired to catch Chenle who had stuck his tongue out at Lucas and ran out the room to save his ass.

 

Lucas sighed and made his way to the dining table where approximately 10 servings of breakfast sat for 5 members. Lucas eyed the plate of bacon and eggs, and sat himself in the chair next to Yeri. He ruffled her hair and she shook her head in annoyance.

 

“How do they even get bacon here, isn’t this island supposed to be deserted or some shit?” Lucas asked, without much seriousness, stuffing food into his mouth. Last night had been so exhausting for some reason and he’d only just realized how hungry he’d been.

 

“Language!” Lucas’s father scolded him.

 

“Xuxi, my dear, you’d know that there’s actually a town on the other side of the island, if you weren’t so busy shutting yourself in your room. At least take a walk, we’re on vacation, after all.” Lucas’s mother had a gentle voice but it was stern. She did not appreciate shut-ins, they tended to be uninformed about the world and the way it works, in her opinion.

 

Chenle was grinning and was about to say something when Lucas shot him a glare. He didn’t want his mother finding out that he snuck out. She’d much rather tolerate him being a shut-in.

 

“When’s brother coming?” Yeri asked, swinging her feet to hit the chair-legs repeatedly.

 

“Soon,” Lucas’s father reached out to lightly pinch Yeri’s cheeks. It cheered her up significantly.

 

Lucas looked at his parents questioningly. He had no idea that his older brother Kun was about to show up. _And who will handle the business then?_ Lucas was thinking, not bitterly. Not bitterly, at all.

 

“Uh, why is he coming here and how did you guys even contact him?” His eyebrows were up and adamant.

 

“Well, your brother needs a vacation too, more than any of us in fact,” his mother said and added “and Xuxi, we called him. You should do that too sometimes. You’re supposed to call people with that device.” She was pointing to Lucas’s phone laid flat on the table. Lucas instinctively put a hand over it. Too much personal stuff in there.

 

He turned on the screen with his eyebrows now knit in confusion. “Holy Shit!” he said suddenly. “I didn’t know we had signals here.” He had gotten up, in excitement, almost knocking his chair back.

 

“Lucas, language!” his father reminded him again. Lucas was too surprised to pay any attention.

 

Chenle was giggling. “You’re so dumb, hyung.” Lucas feigned a threat but he couldn’t help the smile on his face. He was about to call Winwin and have a good laugh about this or that. He had no idea they had signals here. He’d assumed this island to be some deserted private property with nothing. They were renting this mansion, so he hadn’t known there was something else besides it. There were definitely no houses in the vicinity, except the outhouses where the help was staying and he hadn’t seen a single person on the beachside either.

 

Lucas had been forced to finished to finish the food on his plate before he could be excused to call his friend. He was about to finish, when Kun showed up, looking unusually casual and relaxed, tugging his own suitcase despite the guard trailing politely behind him. He had that ever-green warm smile on his face and a calmness in his ways that had won his parents faith. Lucas, in comparison, was too haughty. Even now, he was fidgeting with his fork as he watched his parents personally welcoming Kun inside the house. Yeri was tugging at Kun’s sleeve to bring him in. Only Chenle was missing from the scene, probably playing his silly games.

 

“I’m gonna take a stroll at the beach,” Lucas said, slipping on his slippers, exiting from the same door through which Kun had only just entered. He hovered at the door for a second and gave Kun a quick hug before leaving.

 

“Don’t forget about sunscreen,” Kun shouted across the distance Lucas had managed to cover in the last few seconds, without looking back. _What is he talking about? The sun is too damn weak here._ He kept walking and walking until he reached a rocky part of the beach. He turned around to look back at their mansion, and he could spot it in the distance, there was nothing in between to conceal it. He moved further ahead and climbed on one of the rocks that was flatter than the others. He sat there, looking at the way water clashed with the rocks, leaving white foam in its wake and the din it created was almost pleasant. It was so rhythmic, it began lulling him to sleep again. It was the same faint feeling he’d felt last night, tugging at him, tugging him towards the shore, further into the calmness of the sea, to be consumed by it, in utter and absolute peace.

 

Lucas laid on his back, looking up at the dull grey sky. Dark clouds lazily swept across the sky, the sun shadowed by them. Once in a while, the gaps between the clouds would let some brightness through but soon after there’d be another cloud to fill the space. It was incredibly calming to look at the sky, with the noise of water crashing against the huge rocks in the background, Lucas was slowly lulled into a state of relaxation so deep that he began to nap without even knowing it.

 

A loud splash, something wet hitting a stony surface, a low hiss and Lucas’s eyes snapped open. _It’s definitely not a dream._ The splash sound sounded exactly how it had last night and it had snapped him out of his sleep. Why was he sleeping here anyway? His eyes looked around, examining, searching. The sound had to come from somewhere. He was beginning to think it may have been a dream after all but a strange feeling hung in the air, of mystery, of danger.

 

A low sound again, behind him. Lucas’s heart rate shot up. He was scared, nevertheless he turned, ever so slowly, to look at the source of the sound. He must be dreaming. No inch of could believe what he was seeing. He almost forgot how scared he had been, now all he felt was this awe, this painful feeling in his chest because he had seen something so unbelievable, so unbelievably beautiful and terrifying. But so beautiful.


	3. Chapter 3

This creature, this boy, as young as youth itself, sat perched across a rock as if it was a pedestal for angelic beauty. His brown eyes, big and glossy, were fixed on Lucas, dripping nothing but innocence and his lips, almost too unnaturally red, were curled up in a playful smile, almost vicious. Water droplets sat glistening upon his pale skin, making him shine. The most beautiful thing, however, was the way his petite torso gave into a fishtail of the most beautiful shades of iridescent blue and green Lucas had ever seen. The scales seemed to shimmer and change color when he moved the tail to curl up behind him.

 

It must have identified the awe on Lucas’s face because it tilted his head to the side, expression changing to one of anger and as soon as Lucas outstretched an arm towards him, it hissed, seething with anger and dived headfirst into the sea again. Lucas still dumbstruck, at what he’d seen and his own careless action of trying to reach out and touch this dangerous however exquisite it may have been, leaned over the rock to look at the crook that rocks formed, where it had jumped and disappeared so suddenly. The water there was not shallow, Lucas noticed. He sat there for the next few minutes, committing everything to memory, assuring himself that it wasn’t just a fantastical dream. The air was a lot duller now, the lull had been shattered. The sound of water crashing began to sound annoying, too loud and unpleasant. Lucas stood in the spot where it had lain for a good minute and walked back to his house, still in awe and now slowly coming back to his senses, feeling somewhat petrified of a creature clearly not of his own kind.

 

He didn’t remember most of the walk back home. It was as if he’d been under a spell and then the spell had been broken, so he’d tried to recall what it had been like. Things kept slipping out of his memory. For instance, he had forgotten why did he go to that rocky part of the beach in the first place? Did he sleep there? He couldn’t recall. A face, however, was imprinted onto his memory now, as familiar as his own. More and more would fade away from this memory as the day goes on and Lucas would fight his own thoughts telling him that it was simply a dream.  _ It was not a dream! Not a dream! _

 

“What else do we need?” Kun asked his mother.

 

“Oh, Kun! The maid will get it. You don’t need to go there by yourself. You don’t even know where the market is,” she tried to convince him, to no avail. He was already at the doorway, with a folded jute bag clutched in his hand. 

 

“I’ll take Lucas with me then,” Kun said linking arms with Lucas who was about to enter but was dragged suddenly back out by Kun.

 

“What?” Lucas asked while letting himself be dragged away. The suddenness had snapped him out of his reverie.

 

“The town-side. We need to get groceries,” Kun explained.

 

Lucas groaned, but he was curious about the populated side of the island as well, so he kept his pace up, till they reach the marketplace, not without losing their way twice.

 

While Kun bought this and that, Lucas wandered around deciding whether he should try to investigate about the peculiar thing he’d seen, once again telling himself that it was definitely not a dream. He grabbed a tangerine from a nearby cart and pretended to examine it. The grocer looked at Lucas curiously.

 

“Tourist?” he asked and Lucas was thankful that he didn’t have to initiate the conversation first. Half his job was done.

 

“Yeah, here for a week. We’re staying towards the east,” Lucas said, pointing in the direction of the eastern shore. He had mentioned this intentionally. There was no way the locals didn’t know of something so strange living in their seas. Was this common knowledge? An odd expression flickered across the grocer’s face. He looked away but not in time to escape Lucas’s notice. 

 

“It’s strange down there,” Lucas said, his gaze carefully poised at the man’s face. The man’s hands seemed to stop working for a second. He gave no response.

 

“I was wondering why nobody comes down there?” Lucas’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

 

“Yeah, that part of the sea is considered unlucky. Now boy you gonna buy something or not?” The man was clearly done with the conversation. His question was impatient, Lucas got the hint and decided to leave the man alone but not before paying for the single tangerine he had decided to take with him.

 

Kun had to look around for Lucas who had wandered away while he bought fish for dinner. It was very hard to find Lucas though, he was so tall that he seemed to hover above everybody’s heads around him. A whistle and next moment, Lucas was walking towards him. 

“Been to the beach yet?” Lucas asked, nonchalantly.

 

“Not yet. I plan to, in the evening. Wanna come with me?” Kun asked, glad that Lucas was trying to make conversation for once.

 

Lucas shook his head.

 

“I’ve been out twice already. The farther out you go, the chillier it gets. I’d recommend you stick to our backyard beach for the best sunset view,” Lucas explained, not knowing why he said the last part, but he didn’t want his family coming in contact with that creature. Were there more of him? His teeth looked especially sharp. The hair on his arms stood up a little. He kept on walking, till he was back in his room again. Flipping open his notebook, he tried to sketch the fragments of this boy he remembered, but it came out drearily ugly and inaccurate. On paper, it seemed like a vicious little thing of the sea even though Lucas had been so mesmerized by it. It frustrated him greatly that he could not do justice to what he had witnessed and he cursed his drawing skills. Even Chenle could draw better, he thought. He stared at the sheet, little strokes of green and blue hardly doing its true iridescence any justice. He wanted to see it again, maybe draw it better next time. He wanted to see and memorize the details once again and possibly touch them. 

 

He was googling stuff about mermaids, feeling a bit delusional at the flurry of information available, 99% of it purely bullshit. Then he decided to a bit more specific, adding the name of the island to the search bar. No reports. No sightings. Just some news articles about hundreds of people going missing over the last decade. He was terrified to open the article and even go through it but he did. The article mentioned people going missing in the early 2000s, at first assumed to have suicidally thrown themselves into the sea, when bits and pieces of clothes were washed up ashore, but never any bodies. There was a statement by a local in the paragraph stating how they’ve always had people missing and they believed their side of the sea, as many before had been known to do, had turned unlucky. There was that word again, the same one as the grocer had used. So clearly, as Lucas pieced together, there had been a settlement on the east side before people moved away, fearing bad luck and consequent disappearances. It could not be a coincidence. A merman in the sea and people going missing. The big question mark was only beginning to form when the answer came.

  
  


And then that vicious smile flashed in his mind again, those sharp teeth that could only have one purpose, to tears things apart to pieces. Lucas reflexively held his own hand, scared of the thought of being devoured by a merman. His body felt chilly. Just then he had the worst fucking idea of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I understand that fantasy is not everyone's cup of tea, especially dark ones, so thank you for reading so far. I'm working on developing the foundations of the story before I dive straight into the plot and romance (wink wink) so please be patient. I would appreciate if you'd be so kind as to leave some feedback. It helps me judge if I'm staying on the right track. Thank you. 


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